December 31, 2018.... my last email for 2018

Hello family... It was awesome to see you guys last week. I wish we could skype every week, haha, but its probably for my own good that we can't. even though I would love to. 

This week was good. Pretty calm and I'm not sure that was a good thing because we always seem to get more done when we are in panic mode, but what can ya do. I don't have a ton of interesting stuff to tell you guys but instead of pulling a Jake or Ben and just saying nothing, I will tell you some boring stuff and see if it is interesting. 

We had a ward activity this week and we went to see if Raiane and Silvia wanted to come with us. Silvia wanted to but Rai didn't really want to but Silvia said that she needed to. So what did I do? Totally picked her up and carried her to the church. She is super skinny, like Savannah skinny and the church isn't very far away from her house, probably the same distance as the church from our home in Nibley, but by the end, my arms were killing me. I woke up sore for three days. That is how out of shape I am. Walking all day does nothing for your arms. We went and saw her yesterday as well and did a cool activity with her. We took a picture of Christ and put a paper over it that when you write on it goes through to the other picture like how tithing papers do. We had her write all the bad things in her life on it. And at the end, we took it off and showed her that Christ has already felt all this things and that He is waiting for her to let Him take them away. I don't know that she fully understood what we were trying to tell her but I know that she felt the spirit and that she told us that she would start praying to get baptized. And she and Silvia made a goal to read the Book of Mormon together every day before dinner. I liked that.

We went and taught one of Silvias friends named Felipe. This man is amazing. Not just because he accepted all of our invitations but because he opened up within like 3 minutes and told us all of his life story that includes all of his drama with an ex and his dad leaving his family out of the blue. We just sat there amazed that he trusted us enough to tell us what was going on in his life because then we could use what he was saying to help him understand what the gospel will do for him. 

We had our zone conference this week. I was super nervous the whole time because I was the chosen one to give a training on how to use the Book of Mormon in our teaching without just telling the story of the Book of Mormon. The day beforehand, S Souza and I were practicing what I was going to say and I started telling her all the blessings that the Book of Mormon has brought to my life and how it will bless other people and we both just started crying. It was the best comp study I have had in a really long time. When it got to the part that I had to talk, I didn't have an notes and had no idea the order that I was going to start talking. So I just got up and pulled a Heiner and wung it. And it went super well. I just started talking and without even realizing it, used up all of my time. And I didn't even stumble with my Portuguese. Miracles are real.

After our conference, S Souza and I decided that we were going to go to Burger King for lunch. So we went around asking the elders and if they wanted to come with us. A good group of them said yes, and they all started to leave. We stopped to try and convince another dupla to come with us. When we were leaving, we thought that the elders had already headed out, but when we walked out the front door, they were all there and the second they saw that we were there, they all started walking with us. It was a weird moment of feeling like we had influence over them, hahahaha, to the point that S Souza said, Let's go my people. It was really funny.

Just so everybody knows, Burger King here is as bad as Burger King in the US. 

After our zone conference, we went home and started working again. All of our plans fell through so we started knocking doors and a woman let us in. We ended up singing for her and her husband. At the end, we knelt down with them and Joao Pedro said a prayer and at the end just started crying. Sadly, they left to go to the beach for the holidays so we probably won't get to talk to them for a while but we sent a Book of Mormon with them so I hope they are reading it.

We went to talk to Gabriel this week, just to see how he was doing. We ended up reading a little of the Book of Mormon with him and  asked him what he thought that Heavenly Father wants him to do this new year. He told us that he knows that he needs to go on a mission but that he is scared to go because he is part of the military and he doesn't want to lose his rank and that he's scared to go to a different country. So we started talking to him about how there are people waiting for him to find them and help them. I got to share with him my feelings about going to a different country and how it really is hard but that the fear goes away after about a week. When we started talking about how in the pre earth life we promised to help certain people here on earth, I had the hugest feeling that I had promised to help Gabriel here. He told me at the end that I am his best friend here in Sao Luis. :) Cute. We went to talk to him after church yesterday and helped him clean the padio. It is so hot here and S Souza has low blood pressure so she gets pretty sick in the heat so we were throwing water at each other and talking about missions and it was the best informal lesson that we have had. 

S Souza is learning how to speak English so we are only talking English at home and in the street and it is the most entertaining thing. I don't know how the Brazilians don't just laugh their heads off at me all of the time. She has used every swear word accidentally more than one time. And I just get so startled and tell her that she can't say that word and she gets so worried that I just laugh and laugh. I'm so glad that she just laughs with me and doesn't get offended. 

Anyways, I hope you all had a good week, and that New Years is awesome. I will switch years sleeping because I no longer have the will power to stay up until midnight nor the desire to do so.

I love you guys!!!

Sister Heiner 

Sunset.

Us dying of heat on the side of the road.

My comp is obsessed with incense.

She put flowers in my hair.

Burger King with the crew after zone conference.

An Irma gave us a late Christmas package.

Isabelle!

December 25, 2018

MMMMMMEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYYYYYY CCCCCCHHHHHHHHRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSTTTTTTTTMMMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It doesn't even feel like Christmas because it is super hot and there isn't snow so ya know, its really just how it feels when we start singing Christmas music randomly in July. But that is okay because I am extremely excited to see you guys today!!

But first, let me tell you about this week. We started the week off by drawing our secret santa names in our zone. I got one of our zone leaders and S Souza and I had a party trying to find something that he would like. We ended up buying water guns and writing on one, Elder Muraco and on the other, Comp do Elder Muraco. When he opened them, he got so excited, it was really funny. They said that they were going to spend the hot days shooting each other and shooting the dogs that are always following them. I thought that was funny.

One Tuesday, there was a man that came to the church saying that he had an appointment with one of the Bishops councilors but they don't do interviews or anything on Tuesday, so we sat down to talk to him. And he turned out to be a homeless man. The church is helping him try and find  a place to live and all that jazz. We gave him the first lesson and I felt so much love for this man. He is trying to get his life put back together and we gave him a book of Mormon and he just super gently put it in his bag that he carries around. The sad part of this story is that because he doesn't have a house, we didn't see him the rest of the week. And we weren't really in our area the rest of the week either so that was another problem.

We went to Gravatai for two and a half days to go on splits with the two duplas that are there. The first day, I went with S Alcaraz who is from Argentina. She has a month on the mission so I spent the whole day asking her questions just to get her to talk. It was super cute because at the start of the day she told me that nobody understood her when she makes street contacts so I made her do all the street contacts and everybody was understanding her and passing addresses and you could just see her confidence in herself get bigger and bigger. I love working with new missionaries.

Then I went on splits with S Marino!!! She spent the day telling everybody that we met that I was her first companion which I thought was cute. She is teaching super well, I was super proud of her. I am sure that it wasn't me that helped her learn how to teach like that because she is teaching a billion times better than I am. We ended up walking for four hours straight because the part of her area that we were working in is in the middle of nowhere so we just walked and walked and walked. We ended up talking about how they were probably wasting there time working there because they are using so much more time walking than teaching and the road that they are walking is super busy so it isn't really safe and there is nobody on the way to talk to because it is a highway so we were the only people walking. 

But both days, we ended up staying up way late just talking about the randomest things with the sisters and I left feeling like they really trust us, that we aren't just the annoying sister leaders that they see once during the transfer and who call them once a week to see how they are doing. I was happy about that.

We were in Porto Alegre on Friday because there were a few things we needed to take care of there, and the mission office paid for an uber to take us back to the rodoviaria to get on the train. When we were in the car, we started talking to the driver about the missionaries and all that jazz that we do as missionaries and he told us that he has already talked to the sisters and that he had a book of Mormon but he isn't sure where it ended up. When we were getting out of the car, S Souza started to say "would you like.." And he looked at the book of Mormon in my hand and didn't even let her finish saying the question before blurting out, "Yes". So we gave him my book of mormon. The bad part of this story is that S Souza ended up leaving our phone in his car. Irma Nadir called it for us and he answered and yesterday we went to a train station and he gave it back to us. Which means we went two days without a phone. I thought my life didn't revolve around a phone here because our phone isn't fancy at all, but it still has all of our contacts and addresses and all that stuff so the last two days were a struggle without it. 

We went to a woman's house named Farley and she invited her husband to listen to us, and he DID NOT want to because he is a pastor at some other church, so she just winked at us, got up, went and got his guitar and asked him to sing for us. Then he wanted to talk to us. We spent like an hour singing Brazilian gospel songs. It was the strangest spirit I have felt there. Because it wasn't like a super strong sweet spirit, but you could feel their faith. You could feel that they were believing in what they were singing. I liked that.

Yesterday we had a mission conference for Christmas!! It was really fun. It was super different from last year, because President Jones focused on the spiritual side of Christmas whereas last year was more of the phone side. We watched a video where a person asked a bunch of people questions about Christ and they had to answer without using words, and the spirit was so strong, it was incredible. Then there were a bunch of people that sang songs, including S Souza. And there was a lunch and we switched gifts, and it was seriously just super nice. it was the first time this year I felt like it could really be Christmas season. At the end Sister Jones gave everybody mini Christmas stockings which was super cute.

AND I GOT MOMS PACKAGE!!!!!!!!!!! And a package from Uncle Paul!!!! I was so happy!! It was truly a Christmas miracle. When I saw the picture of Luke, I just sat there and cried. I cannot believe how big he has gotten. I know I see pictures of you guys almost every week but still. I surprised me for some reason, hahah.

I am so excited to talk to you guys in a few hours. I hope everybody is happy and that you guys have a great Christmas! 

I LOVE YOU GUYS!!!

Sister Heiner

December 17, 2018 This week there were tons of rain storms and we forgot an umbrella every single time ... whoops....

This week was a disaster, hahahah, but it was good. S Souza is a riot. She is from Campo Grande, and has a way of making me feel a ton more hopeful about what I am doing and the area we are working on. We have a problem that we love to talk to each other, and sit down to study at night and totally end up talking about life and about our spiritual experiences and mission stuff and then all of a sudden it is 10:30 so we go lay in bed and turn off the lights and end up talking until 11:30, hahah, it is killing the sleeping groove, but it is really nice to feel this close to a companion again. She has the same personality as Becca, which means we are laughing in the street all day long. But when it comes time to be serious, she is dead serious and teaches with such a strong spirit that it blows me away.

We decided this week that we were going to close the area we were working in and start working in an area that is longer away. The sisters have been working in the same area for almost a year now and we were feeling like everybody already has had contact with the missionaries. Unfortunately, because the sisters hadn't worked there in a long time, it was a little rough starting out but I'm sure this week will be better because we both feel so strongly that that is where we are supposed to be working. 

S Souza thinks that this city was made by the same people that made Minecraft because all the houses are weird, I thought Luke would enjoy that.

We are taking care of a bunch of sisters this transfer. 5 companionships, which is 2 more companionships than all the other sister leaders, but we are both super excited. We went with Irma Nara to a store this week and are putting together Christmas packages for them, and it is going to be really cute. I hope they like them. One of the sisters is S Marino!!!! I am really happy about that.

This week was the ward Christmas party and President said that we could stay if we wanted to, which we of course wanted to. It was the most Christmas I have seen my whole time here. Christmas just isn't a huge deal here, there aren't a ton of trees or lights or any of that stuff that we have back home, but the Christmas party had all of that. They had a live nativity with the primary kids, and it was super cute. 

There was a moment this week when S Souza thought she knew where we were and she screamed the name of the person we were trying to find, but she really didn't know where we were and yelled at the wrong house. I felt bad for laughing so had, but she was so confident in herself and then ended up running and hiding across the street.

We went and talked to a woman named Lucia, and ended up finding out that her husband hits her and her kids. She just dumped her whole life story on us after we had been there for only 10 minutes and we ended up staying for 2 hours trying to help her. But she doesn't think that he has a problem with her, she is mostly just upset that her oldest daughter fights back with him. We showed her the Steven Bangerter talk from October about families and she got super quiet and told us that she thinks what he was saying is really important. We shall see what comes out of it this week...

S Souza wasn't feeling too well on Saturday so we asked the irmao that works at our apartment to give her a blessing. You could tell that he wasn't feeling too well either and that he was really nervous, but he gave her a super simple blessing and at the end told her that Heavenly Father is happy with all the efforts that she is using for this area. He was crying, she was crying, I wasn't crying (new, I know) and he told us that while it wasn't a blessing for him, it was the blessing he had needed to give to feel better as well. I thought that was super cool.

Raiane did not get baptized this week. There is drama in the mom department with her, and ended with her asking us to pray that Silvia breaks up with her boyfriend. Which we won't do, but that comment threw us through a loop for sure. 

We are trying to help Gabriel, Irma Roses grandson, see that he needs to serve a mission and it is proven difficult. But he came to church yesterday and stayed the whole time which was a Christmas miracle. 

Anywhos, that's what I got for now, I am super excited to talk to you guys next week!!! I love you!!

Sister Heiner 

My companion <3 

Look who I found.

Playing with play-dough.

Isabelle presenting her spoon.

Isabelle took a picture of how we were teaching Rai.

The sunset after a huge rain storm.

They worship this statue.

Our presents for the sisters halfway put together.

Our mission leader teaching us how 

to live life after the mission, hahha.

December 10, 2018

This week was good and I am going to have to type really fast because today is transfers and my new comp is gonna get here pretty soon so I'm sorry for the bad spelling, but yes i am staying in Sao Luis, woo!

So we started off the week by teaching that man that only speaks English. It was a pretty interesting experience, just because the last time I taught in English, I was in mission prep so it felt really weird. But when we (meaning I because S Rodrigues does not speak English) gave him the book of Mormon, he got super quiet and said, this is for me? And we were like, yep. And he started speaking really fast in French. Which made me really confused but then he told us that because we had given him a Book of Mormon in French, he thought that we spoke French. When I explained that we had only brought one in French because we thought he might understand French better than Portuguese, he got quiet again and then almost started crying. Which surprised me. He told me that he didn't think anybody would think about him enough to bring something in a language he would be able to understand. He came to a ward activity as well, which was fun except that I had to translate everything which made my head spin. So now I know that I cannot be a translator when I get home, hahah.

We spent the week talking with Silvias daughter, Raiani. She has almost been baptized a few times and this week was another one of those few times. She was super ready to be baptized and we were really excited. The day of her interview, we went to the church to fill up the font, and Silvia called and said that she wasn't going to authorize her to be baptized (because she's 12). We were like, what? Because it was Silvia that asked us to talk to her and teach her and get her interested in church. She went off on a long story that I didn't really understand but ended with saying that she could be baptized next week. Really, I think she was just trying to show us that she´s still the mom and we can't go faster than she wants us to. Which was super frustrating, but what can ya do? At least we have a baptism for this next week.

We were walking and a man who was sitting in his car called out , Hey babies. in English. And we went and made a contact with him. Nothing happened, it was just funny because he didn't know that I'm American. 

We spent a good 4-5 hours updating our area book after two transfers of not doing so. We were going to be late for lunch, so we called the irma saying that we were going to be late and it turns out that she forgot it was her day to feed  us. I seriously have never been happier that lunch fell through because we didn't have to clean up what we were working on, we just got to keep going and finish it. Two days later, we are behind again, hahahahaha, whoops.

Juliano is getting ready to ask Vitoria to marry him! So we cut out letters saying Quer Casar Cmg? and took test drive pictures. I will send you my favorite. but he laughed really hard when he saw them all and told us that he will just show them to Vitoria to ask her to marry him. We said that was a horrible idea.

We met a man named Davi this week. You know you've met one of the chosen ones when he asks questions during the lesson and says the closing prayer. And doesn't drink, smoke and his wife died so he lives alone. And isn't addicted to anything. Its perfect, haha, we shall see what happens this week.

We also went and spent an hour or so with a less active member. He is 27, got married at 17, got divorced this year, has two little boys that are the cutest thing, and doesn't come to church because he doesn't want to. We were like, well, at least he´s honest. But he also said that he is reading the Book of Mormon and praying and that he wants to come back to church, but its just not the right time right now. There is never a wrong time to come to church, people. Remember that.

Yesterday, we were walking to the church for a meeting with the bishop and we saw two dogs that belong to a member and ended up chasing them around to pick them up because they had run away from home. It was actually super funny because S Rodrigues pulled off her shoes and was chasing them barefoot screaming there names, and I was on the phone with their owner, just saying, Oi Tai, tudo bem? We found your dogs, you want us to leave them here or chase them to your house? And she screamed CHASE THEM! So we did.

I think that's about all the interesting I've got for this week. Last night I got a solid 4 hours of sleep because we didn't get transfers until 11:30 and S Rodrigues needed to pack her suitcases. I will be feeling more tired than usual until May now.

I love you guys!!

AH! about skype. I don't know exactly what time it will be during Christmas, but it will be after 2:00 here. I don't remember how many hours difference it is right now, so I'm not sure what time it will be there.

Love you again!

Sister Heiner

When you steal the irmas fancy new iPhone and take about

a million pictures, hahaha.

These are two of a dozen!

Family home evening with 

Silvias family and irma Rose.

All the parks here have exercise equipment.

When everybody is getting married, 

so you try to fit in...

Our dogs that stay in the street Bolivia. 

We gave them names. 

In order is Luke, Anderson, Richard, 

Pumba, Yoda and Tots who is in the front.

We were trying to get to Claytons house

 but my companion read the map upside down 

and we ended up on the other side of town.

Taniah!

Saying goodbye to Rafael.

December 3, 2018 A little bit of Audrey

So this week was actually pretty frustrating but good at the same time. I think that is a feeling that has become normal here, hahah.

We went to Porto Alegre this week for two reasons. The first being that I needed to renew my visa. I went with S Wiese and an elder that came here with us. When we got there, we found out that some of our documents have expired. So we are illegally in Brazil. The look on the elders face was priceless. The lady was super nice though and didn't send us to prison. The mission office is in a scramble trying to figure all that out and I will have to go back in a few weeks probably. 

We also had a leadership meeting which is always exciting. I really like it just because we get to see a ton of other missionaries. E Magno from Gramado was there. So was S Marino!!!!! She is sick and had to do a bunch of tests so she was staying in Porto Alegre for a few days before heading back to Taquara. I hope they figure everything out because I really didn't understand what it was that was the problem, I just understood that she hasn't been able to work a ton this transfer. E Southwick was there and he had a ton of questions about the zone like usual, but this time I could actually answer them because we have been keeping pretty close tabs on what has been going on. President Jones called on a bunch of people to do practices in front of everybody. I have not prayed so hard in a very long time, hahaha. I thankfully wasn't picked on because I think my heart would have stopped. Imagine doing role plays in front of the best missionaries in the mission., Uh yeah. No thanks.

We got the chance to teach Mayerson a few more times this week which was really fun. He really is a sweet kid for just getting out of prison. He told us that he has six more months on his jury sentence so that is six more months that he can't get baptized. Which is frustrating because he is changing a ton and really working hard. We gave him a book of mormon last week and when we walked past his house, he was in the front and he ran to us asking us to explain something that he had read that he didn't understand completely. He explained the 8 witnesses to us perfectly and asked where he could find the rest of Joseph Smith's testimony. He was ready and waiting when we walked past his house before church as well. 

We taught a woman who had evil spirits in her house this week. It was awful. She started talking about witches that were haunting her and then she got dead serious, looked at S Rodrigues and asked, Do you hear her talking? And we were like, Uh no. Tchau.  And booked it out of there. My head was pounding and S Rodrigues was ready to throw up. Usually I laugh at the thought of having evil spirits close to us but this time I could literally feel them and it is a feeling I never want to have again.

Irma Nara gave us a Christmas present of super expensive perfume to say thank you for baptizing her husband and her grandson. Sweetheart.

Also there was a day that it was dumping rain all morning so when we left, we put on rain boots and it stopped raining and was super hot the rest of the day and then the next day it was super sunny all morning so we left wearing flats and it started dumping rain and didn't stop for 3 hours. I think somebody was trying to mess with us, haha.

We went to Matias Velho for the night Saturday and helped with a Christmas ballet show that one of their members was putting on. She asked us to sing Silent Night in front of everybody and then just help around. It was really fun even though it probably wasn't very productive. The kids dancing was really cute. There were a ton of like 3 and 4 year olds and during one of the songs, there was a little girl totally dancing to her own groove just going off and it was the cutest thing I have seen in a long time.

Yesterday, we didn't have lunch, so we went back to our house after church and made lunch in less than 10 minutes and ate super quick so we could take a Sunday nap. And I had a dream that Luke walked into our room and asked if he could lay in my bed, so he came and laid with me and when I woke up, there were a ton of kids playing right outside our window. It throw me off for a little bit.

So at about 7:30 last night, I got super frustrated because this week just was not going as I wanted it to, and I looked up at the ceiling and said, Why am I even here? Why am I in Brazil? Why am I speaking Portuguese when I could be speaking English? It would be so much easier! And then Heavenly Father answered so fast I almost lost my balance. 1: I had a quick little flash of what my life would have been like if I had decided to stay home and not come on a mission. All the things that would have been different, how I would have been different. Then we went to teach Rafael and we spent the whole time laughing and you could see that he was making connections in his head. There was another kid with us that is a member and you could see that he was learning things as well. At the end, I just heard somebody saying, This is why you are in Sao Luis right now. Then we were walking to another appointment doing contacts and we stopped a man from Africa who didn't know how to speak Portuguese, but he speaks fluent English. That is when I learned that speaking English really isn't any easier than Portuguese at this point. In fact, it is easier to speak Portuguese right now. Heavenly Father was not having any of my frustration, haha. I am so grateful that He is listening to my prayers.

Anywhos, that's my story for this week. I love you all a ton and hope you are all happy!!!

Sister Heiner 

Nara and Rafa.

Presents hanging from a tree.

At Matias Velho.

Surprise selfie with S Rodrigues.

Watching the stage.

At night with some cute girls.

Silvio brought us 30 eggs and brought them to church.

Our Christmas tree with presents under it.

Jesus head that we saw.